Nagios, 2nd Edition

5.4 Monitoring via SNMP

With the Simple Network Management Protocol, SNMP, local resources can be queried over the network (see also Client 4 in Figure 5-1, page 100). If an SNMP daemon is installed (NET-SNMPD is used extensively and is described in 11.2.2 The NET-SNMP daemon in page 238), Nagios can use it to query local resources such as processes, hard drive, and interface load.

The advantage of SNMP lies in the fact that it is widely used. There are corresponding services for both UNIX and Windows systems, and almost all modern network components such as routers and switches can be queried via SNMP. Even uninterruptable power supplies (UPSs) and other equipment sometimes have a network connection and can provide current status information via ...